


Hounded

by aderyn



Series: Two Hills [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Sherlock on the run, THoB, TRF, alone protects me, eloquent dust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:46:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We run, but why do we run? (Because a hand on the back of the neck could mean love, or doom.)</p>
<p>John on the hunt; John tying a shoe on the fly, laughing; John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hounded

**Author's Note:**

> For [greenjudy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greenjudy/pseuds/greenjudy)! Thank you for William Gibson and a lot of other things.

  


_“They set a slamhound to Turner’s trail in New Delhi…he didn’t see it coming.”—William Gibson, Count Zero_

  


We run, but _why_ do we run? (Because a hand on the back of the neck could mean love, or doom.)




Sherlock in Tashkent, in Prague, in a cold northern city full of canals where the light prisms on a church floor.  Heavy pews, plain, forsaken.  (Sacred spaces don’t protect us, not really; they help us keep our heads down.) We run, but why? (Because there’s protecting to do.) There’s a statue of a dog (a wolfish breed, malamute or husky) in the city square, bronze head rubbed shiny for luck.

The nave, the sacristy, the very heart of it...the scent of wood mites and dust (flakes and solid irregulars, aerodynamic diameter >50 μm, settling to the floor), vertebrae against the hard pew, the scent of stone-sieved algae, not far off.  He could follow the lines in the wood grain, soothing or maddening, or both.  (Beech, vulnerable to worm; elm, liable to warp; oak, heavy-grained, heartwood, full of tannins; likely.)

The scent of water, a lost trail, and on the senses’ outskirts, danger.

Cold, startling, blue-fingered:   He thinks of John on the hunt; John tying a shoe on the fly, laughing; John, once, kissing him violently on the cheek when the trail ended in a live child (Maeve Woodley, 7, gone 37 hours). Lifting her, hesitant, into the sun.

Another child howling at the sight of him.  The violet gloom of the moor.

He dreams, waits for his contact, dreams (of John's left hand); in the distance, the scenthounds, the runners, baying.  


  






End file.
